Author: Michelle

Tiny pieces come to me every day
Still I wait
Things are falling into place
But so much time goes to waste
–Gotye/Puzzle With A Piece Missing

The human heart is a little bit like a puzzle for me. There’s a minimum amount of assembly required just to keep it beating. We all mostly have that part. Then there are extra pieces that you need for love, sex, friendship, romance. Faith. Hope. Trust. Most of us are missing some of the pieces. I think we are born with them all, but by the time we’re school age, we’ve already lost some of the pieces for trust and belief. Some of us have people who love us who can find the lost pieces and put them back into place.

Once the pieces are lost, it’s hard to find them again. Especially if the trust piece is gone. That piece takes a lot of others with it. Hope usually sticks to it. Faith, too.

You have to have both things– someone who loves you enough to put your heart together, and enough pieces to assemble.

No one ever really gets to have all of the pieces together at once.
Not for very long anyway.
If you’re very lucky, you’ll have someone in your life who not only finds every piece, but puts them all together for you.
It might hold together for a year or two.
Then life will happen, the pieces will fall back out, and some of them will be misplaced again.

It’s a lifelong process, finding and losing the pieces of your heart.

But if you ever have your heart whole, even for a short time, you’ll always know what it felt like to have your heart in one whole piece.
Lit up from within.

When I apologized for being too sarcastic today, my coworkers laughed and told me I’m not being any more sarcastic and difficult than I am on any other day??

It’s a good sign that they laughed, right?

Also, when I was threatening to open a vein (which I do multiple times daily) over some stupid project I don’t have time to work on, my coworkers pointed out that I have several other worse projects that might be more suicide-worthy if I was so inclined.

I am very proud of them. I have taught them well.

Ah, the love of your fellow laborers.

Mara sat slumped at the edge of the bed, her hair in her eyes and a cigarette in her mouth. For two weeks, she had been having sexual dreams so vivid they left her more physically sore than actual sex. She joked with her friends at first about the astounding dreams, referring to them as her off-premise orgasms. Weeks later though, she was physically a wreck, close to losing her job because her mental focus was so bad, and emotionally scrambled from the lack of sleep.

“Incubus, dude. I need a rest. No one can fuck this much” she mumbled between drags on her cigarette.

A guttural but somehow cultured, lightly accented voice, distinctly male, responded from the foot of her bed:
“I haven’t enjoyed a human so much since the Renaissance. You disappoint me.
I am not an incubus, however, my treasure. I believe your word for me would be angel, although your Judeo-Christian tradition doesn’t represent us accurately. We are far less ethereal than your present day traditions might suggest.”

Mara, quite certain that she was still asleep in spite go all evidence to the contrary, was not alarmed that there was an angel in her bedroom. A large, very aroused angel. After all, she’d been seeing quite a lot of him. She just didn’t know that he was real. She was also completely unfit to respond to the situation with the decorum required when visited by an angel.
“Angel my ass. Just give me a fucking break, OK stud? You’re an amazing fuck, really, but you can’t just pop into a woman’s room any time you want. And who else would you be fucking, if not humans? That’s creepy.”

The creature at the foot of the bed made a…sound…a frightening, inhuman sound…a displeased sound. Something like a growl, but with more Hellfire. Mara found herself suddenly and completely immobilized as the angel nuzzled her neck with a very hungry sort of snarl.

“Just because I enjoy playing with you, do not think that I won’t dispose of you if you make me angry. I have been prone to..well..no need to go into all of that now. I was entirely uninvolved in the slaughter of those Assyrians you know. I’ve been positively benevolent for decades! Do be civil. An angel must be respected. Now, get up and have a wash. I have things to attend to.”

Mara nodded, now more or less convinced that there was some sort of actual physical being in her room. Perhaps it was her achy pelvis, or maybe the subtle aroma of sandalwood, smoke and sex that lingered behind him. Fuck. He must be ten feet tall, but he smelled amazing.
“What should I call you?”

The angel released her, and stood up.

“Call me Ishmael.”

Mara blinked.

“No one thinks an angel can make a joke. Relax, we do read, you know.
Humans do not have the proper sort of vocal cords to pronounce my name. Perhaps you should call me Samael, or Samuel. I will be away for several days. It would please me to find you here upon my return.

I am only seven feet tall. You must be very tired indeed.”

And he was gone. No puff of smoke. No blaze of flames. No wind. Just gone.

“Fucker. On this planet, it’s considered polite to say goodbye after spending several weeks violating someone in her sleep.”

“I can still hear you, Mara. And you weren’t sleeping. Good-bye, my treasure.”

“Good-bye Samael. Nice trick.”

Mara lit another cigarette and sighed. No one would ever believe this. She wasn’t sure she believed it entirely herself.